Advocacy

​With the new year upon us, let us take a moment to reflect upon 2023, which was easily the most effective and successful legislative session in recent history for Big I NY. The victories we achieved this year will have lasting impacts on independent agencies and their customers. These accomplishments were achieved, in no small part, due to the tireless advocacy of our members and our government affairs team in Albany.Photo inspection reform and unfair quoting practices legislation signed into law:In 2023, Big I NY was successful in passing a law to allow insurance companies to waive CARCO inspections for the next four years. Based on…

​What Happened:Great news! Governor Hochul has taken favorable action on two key bills affecting IAs and their customers. On December 23rd, the Governor signed into law a Big I NY priority bill, A.4668-B, which will require carriers to run an insurance motor vehicle record before binding coverage. This will protect customers from unscrupulous quoting and pricing practices whereby certain carriers will bind a policy only to later run the MVR and substantially raise the premium. Responsible insurance agents and companies utilize all available underwriting resources prior to binding a policy for an insured. The practice of intentionally disregarding driver history information in order to present…

​​New York First is a partnership that brings together insurance company leaders and independent insurance agents that are members of Big I NY to advance issues and do research on behalf of the insurance industry.  A recent example was in 2022 when the NY First governing committee spearheaded and funded an aggressive public relations campaign to allow insurance companies in New York to waive burdonsome CARCO inspections.  This will save valuable staff time and help avoid situations where customers lose coverage because they were unable to complete an inspection. Currently, New York First is providing essential data to support Big I NY's meetings with top insurance…